Yellow light, burnt honey from the hanginglamp, a wicker light, the jade plants in the windoweating smoke while the wine poured itself, mea knot beneath the table, four, unwholly made.1976—the summer denim people celebratedAmerica outside with late barbeques and slip-n-slides and sparklers, the gnats down by the crickterrorized by older kids with punks on nights fire-flies flashed up the hill and the word thicket madesomething out of sound, and bramble. Holed upin that kitchen, listening to the sighings of I’dguess my own and other monsters, I prayed neverto grow tits, get caught inside this fog, a cigarettelife, hating on skin-cells lit up in shafts of sun. Whyshould anyone vacuum the shag if all it did was suckaway daytime starlight? I wished for a dogbut when we got one it died, and I never wantedin charge of life again. From down betweentheir knees I heard women saying all the thingsthey weren’t, not really, and felt more and more nothere, not home, and this was how I came tobeing. Hunting light, disquieted, mine a brittle nestamong the half-shadow of motherbodies. Minea double life: Glow-watcher. Cindergrasp. The second-hand. Call me Ashqueen—no, don’t. I’m Mote.